80% of the world's light sockets now supported

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It may have missed Valentine's day, but Philips still wants to be a part of your romantic nights in. It's just added a new candle bulb fitting to its range of connected, color-changing Philips Hue light bulbs.

A 40W equivalent E14 -470 lumen at 4000 kelvin - bulb, the candle fittings are available in both Hue's white ambiance and color ambiance options, letting you get a broad white color shade spectrum, or the 16 million colors offered up by the full range color type.

With the addition of the candle bulb, Hue is now compatible with 80% of the lighting fixtures around the globe.

Color control

It's also increasingly easy to control the Hue bulbs. 600 apps are now available to do everything from sync the bulbs with TVs and games consoles to activating color-flashing party modes. The bulbs now also support Amazon's Alexa voice commands, letting you bark at an Echo or Echo Dot to switch them on or off.

There are also a range of sleep-programming features built into the bulbs too. Mimicking what wake-up lamps offer, the bulbs can be programmed to slowly dim at bedtime and to replicate the sunrise in the morning, to help give you a more restful night's sleep.

The Philips Hue candle bulbs will hit Europe by the end of April, and North America "later this year." They're priced from £29.99, which roughly converts to $37 / AU$49. The more-expensive Hue White and Color bulb will be £49.99 (around $62 / AU $80).